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Of course The Fed isn't on our side. However, it gets way too much attention from the right-wing. Fractional reserve banking isn't some conspiracy to enslave us; it's actually a pretty simple mechanism that only plays a small part within the larger capitalist system.

And both the central banks and fractional reserve banking are natural evolutions of and within capitalism that are absolutely necessary for its existence: they were not created as conspiracies for the capitalists to amass power (they already had it!), they were created as necessary tools to maintain and expand the process of capital accumulation. So those people willing to abolish them without abolishing capitalism itself are reactionaries in the literal sense of the word: they wish to go back to a world past gone that cannot and should not exist again. The way is forward.

Meh, there are worse ways to control the money supply. Obviously, under a socialist system, it wouldn't fly, but in the context of our current system, it is reasonably effective, and at least insulated somewhat from the partisan wrangling in the halls of government. So, while I'm against it as I'm generally in favor of redoing our whole system, I'm not specifically going to call it out as particularly bad.

It's also a non-Public institution, and although it is blocked from partisan wrangling it is also accountable only to banks, which are the institutions which give the most power to the elite class. Quantitative Easing causing inflation also hurts the people worst off socioeconomically.

It's only limitedly non-public, given who appoints the chairman. Also, it's dubious that inflation preferentially hurts poor people. Inflation fundamentally hurts creditors and helps debtors, and poor people tend to be the latter far more than the former.

In Europe anyway the obsession with inflation seems completely dysfunctional given the huge levels of unemployment and lack of growth, but I don't know the US economy that well so I can't say if it's a real danger there. My guess is that, like the deficit fetish, it's not as big a deal as it's portrayed to be.

It's definitely much worse here regarding inflation. We rarely raise the minimum wage, so between CPI and inflation from over-printing money we depreciate the capita for the people worst off.

I'm not saying the solution is to "end the fed". I don't know the solution. If we kept our minimum wage up like COLA it might not be as big of an issue, but it really is the major institution for the banking elite. The boards of the major banks appoint the federal chairman. Jamie Diamond is the head of the NY Federal Reserve, and the CEO of JP Morgan Chase. It's not uncommon for that to happen, there's no restrictions to conflicts of interest, and there's not much ways to prevent that from happening aside from using congress to regulate. Do you think the European Central Bank or IMF are good institutions?

Like I said before though, I'm against capital in general. I view it as a way to assert power. A lot of times we see lending institutions funding both sides of a war, and profiting off of it. I'm somewhere between a libertarian socialist and anarcho-communist.

No, the ECB is a mess as well. Partly because it has a single mandate to target inflation, though it's really honouring it in the breach now, so for a long time ECB was saying "we don't care if there's a recession and huge unemployment, inflation is the only variable we have to control".

Another big problem with ECB is that it sets interest rates for a very heterogeneous economy. This is true for the US as well, but through the federal government there is a certain amount of capital recycling: surplus areas pay to invest in deficit areas, through the federal government. In Europe it's a Hobbesian war between the member states, trying to shaft their labour force more and more so they can be more "competitive", and increase their exports at the expense of everyone else. But mathematically, not everyone can have a positive balance of trade, so eventually the states that are importing (and which are fueling demand in the export economies) get shafted by public or private debt. The ECB needs some kinf of vehicle to recycle capital: possibly a fiscal union and a treasury, possibly eurobonds to be used by the European Investment Bank for capital recycling.